Medicine: Mother, Father & Ulcer

Peptic ulcers are about four times as common among men as among
womennobody knows why.*Three University of Cincinnati psychiatrists
decided that women ulcer patients were not getting enough attention,
and set out to study what might have made a representative group of
them sick.

The results were surprising. Of 25 patients, aged 10 to 66, the
investigators found that almost every one had been left motherless, or
had been rejected or neglected by her mother. Every one had become
unhealthily dependent on her father, husband or lover. Some
overcompensated for their dependence by...